5 - Her Deadly Mischief (5 page)

“Hold your arms straight,” Madame Dumas ordered out of one corner of her mouth. She’d stowed her pins on the opposite side. “I need to fit this to you.”

“Did I do that much damage?”

“The tear was easily repaired, but the waist needs taking in. It sags where it should fit like a glove. Doesn’t your woman ever feed you?”

As instructed, I made my torso into a living statue. Fortunately, my lips were allowed to move. “Have you ever seen anything to rival last night’s tragedy?”

She shrugged as she pinned. “I’m not surprised. These girls of today do not know how to conduct their affairs. In Paris, when I was a young woman, arrangements were made properly. Attorneys made certain the gentleman’s funds were secure and drew up a settlement while his breeches were still buttoned. Imagine staking your future on a wager over a jewel box. It was bound to end in trouble of some kind.”

“You know about the wager? That business was supposed to be kept quiet.”

Madame licked her finger and rolled the end of a thread into a knot. “When did Venice ever keep anyone’s secrets? Talk of the whores’ deadly contest has been sweeping the city faster than a sirocco wind. A man on my
campo
has already set up his own wager—” She paused to whip in a few stitches.

Tightening my skin away from her needle, I asked, “What sort of wager?”

“On who will be hung for the murder, of course. Odds are running in favor of the young man, but I laid down a
zecchino
on La Samsona. And I wasn’t the only one.” She straightened and looked me in the eye. Then a smile that was surely meant to wheedle sprang to her lips; unfortunately, several discolored teeth spoiled the effect. “They say you saw the masked killer, Signor Amato. You’re a clever one. Tell me now, could I be right? I could certainly use the winnings.”

I blinked, and thought for a moment.

“It’s possible, I suppose. La Samsona is a tall woman, but the figure I saw was broad, bulky—”

“And so is she,” the costumer broke in excitedly. “Her years of lifting iron bars have given her the shoulders of a prize fighter. Many times I’ve watched her swan from the lobby to her box, and I’ve seen her in the refreshment room, too. Her dressmaker must be a treasure—she knows how to draw the eye away from those horrible shoulders. But La Samsona is still an Amazon. And a more grasping, ambitious whore never lived, I hear.”

“I suppose you believe La Samsona heard that Zulietta was within minutes of winning the wager.”

Nodding, she folded my tunic over her thin, tightly sleeved arm. “Heard about it and decided murder was better than losing her diamonds. Think on it,
mon cher
. How easy it would be for that great giant to throw on a man’s cloak and
bauta
, leave her box, and commit the deed. She could have smuggled in her disguise for the very purpose.”

I took Madame Dumas’ free hand in mine. With a quick squeeze, I said, “I wish you luck in your neighbor’s lottery, old friend, but I must tell you that Messer Grande favors Alessio Pino for the culprit. I wouldn’t be surprised if he already has him in custody.”

“We’ll soon see.” And with a bob of the tightly wound bun atop her head, she added, “Wouldn’t care to bet on it, would you?”

***

I returned to the stage to find Emilio and Vittoria licking their wounds at opposite ends of the boards. Torani and the accompanist were downstage, digging through a pile of scores. The other singers of the company kept up hearty conversation and forced cheerful smiles as if they had not just witnessed two of their colleagues filleting each other with words as sharp as carving knives.

“Here, I have it.” Torani waved a sheaf of music. After sending the accompanist to the harpsichord, our maestro directed Emilio to rehearse a passage that had been sounding more like musical gargling than sweet song. “The rest of you are at liberty for half an hour,” Torani threw over his shoulder as Emilio squeaked out a few exploratory notes.

Still displaying anger-bright cheeks, Vittoria blew past me and shoved a prop boy into the nearest flat. I heard her heels tap-tap-tap all the way up the stairs to her dressing room. The others headed to the crooked little room beneath the stairs where we often whiled away our time between rehearsal and performance. Wine would flow from the bottle that always stood on the high windowsill; gossip would flow still faster.

My simmering curiosity led me elsewhere.

I passed through the stage door and availed myself of the staircase used by footmen delivering dinners and performing various errands. On the fourth level, a swinging door provided entrance to a cloakroom that presented the usual welter of abandoned cloaks and coats, hats with smashed crowns, and other orphaned bits of clothing. A long black cloak with braided frogging made a lumpy pyramid in the middle of the space. I bent to retrieve it. Shaking out its heavy folds, I saw it was fashioned for a man of prodigious size. Had this garment swaddled the unconscious dwarf? If so, it was a miracle Pamarino hadn’t suffocated.

I hung the cloak on an empty hook and stepped back. Cocking my head, I tried to imagine the murderous figure I’d observed hoisting Pamarino’s dead weight onto the hook and tucking the thick fabric around his slack body. Then I put myself in the dwarf’s place. How frightening to be manhandled like a rag doll, to awaken in darkness, helpless, barely able to catch a breath of air.

I was deep in contemplation when a hand on my shoulder made me jerk around with a gasp.

“
Scusi
, Signor Amato,” said a workman clasping a push broom, a lanky old fellow with untidy white hair that flopped over shaggy eyebrows. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“No,
grazie
. I merely wanted to see where Messer Grande’s men found that poor little man.”

The workman folded his hands and balanced his chin on the broom handle. “That ugly little imp? He was hanging right there. A pitiful sight as I ever did see.” The man indicated a hook on the back wall.

“You were here? I thought Messer Grande had sent the theater staff home.”

“Not me.” He made a fist and thumped his chest. “First to arrive, last to leave, that’s me. I clean my way out the door after everyone else has left their dirty footprints.”

Of course. How easy it was to forget the people that worked in obscurity to make our daily lives go more smoothly.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

After a flicker of surprise, he said, “I’m called Biagio. Biagio Zipoli.”

“Well, Biagio, can you tell me how the constables happened to find the dwarf?”

He stood a little taller. “I led them to him. I was sweeping the corridor when I heard a noise coming from in here. I almost passed right by. Thought it might be a footman amusing himself with someone’s maid. You can’t imagine what people get up to around here.”

Given the backstage antics I’d witnessed, I could well imagine, but I merely nodded, encouraging him to continue.

“At first, it was just knocking and thumping, but when I heard screams, I pushed the door open. Saw something thrashing under that cloak there. Nearly pissed my breeches when I uncovered the little demon. He begged me to help him down, but I didn’t dare touch him.”

“Why not? He’s only a small man. His name is Pamarino.”

Biagio shook his head solemnly. “The good Lord made men, but he never made anything like that. That imp is Old Scratch’s work.” To reinforce his point, Biagio made the sign of the cross, then kissed his fingers.

It was no use trying to change Biagio’s mind. I couldn’t explain why Pamarino was made as he was, but I was certain Satan had no more to do with him than the runt in a litter of puppies. I gestured toward the brass hooks. “How was he hung up?”

Biagio let the broom handle fall against his shoulder. He pressed his wrists together, then shot his arms above his head. “He was tied like so. Dangling, hollering with all his might, beating his boot heels against the wall. You can still see the marks.”

Indeed, black half moons dotted the pale plaster. “You called for the law?”

“
Si
, Signore. They cut him down.”

“What was he restrained with?”

My informant scratched his head and poked his broom at the detritus that had collected in the corners of the cloakroom. A wicker hamper had overturned to spill its contents of muffs and scarves. “Some sort of cords. Not too heavy. But I don’t see them here. I think the constables took them away.”

Good for them, I thought. Another sign that this new Messer Grande had a head for investigation.

Biagio was still wielding his broom. “Hello, what’s this?” He bent to retrieve two pieces of polished wood that had been stacked against the molding where wall met floor. Long, thin, and rounded at one tip, they looked as if they belonged backstage. Levers or some other component of the elaborate scene machines, no doubt. Biagio evidently agreed. He gathered them up and announced his intention to carry them down to the wings.

I laid a hand on his arm. “One more question.”

“
Si
?”

“Around the time the woman fell from the box, did you see anyone who didn’t belong here? Anything at all suspicious?”

The workman surprised me with a hearty chuckle. Pressing a finger against the side of his nose, he gave me a conspiratorial wink. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to find out who killed her.”

Was I so transparent? I’d hoped he would think I was merely asking a few idle questions—a more interesting way of passing time than gossiping with the rest of the cast. I shrugged. “Well, then?”

“I’ll tell you what I told Messer Grande’s men, but I wager you’ll make more of it.”

“Yes?”

“Some time before the singing began, I spied a man going up and down the corridor, asking after Alessio Pino’s box.”

“A tall man in a
bauta
?”

“No.” Biagio gave me a bewildered look. “Who would notice a man in a
bauta
? Half the gentlemen on this level were wearing one. No, this man didn’t have a mask of any sort. Though his suit was silk, he moved like a rough cob. A sailor, I’ll be bound.”

“A sailor?” I demanded sharply, then modulated my tone. “What made you think he was a sailor?”

My informant shrugged. “They just have a look about them, you know. When a fellow spends his days on a rolling deck with salt spray in his face, it marks him.”

Try as I might, I could wring no further details from Biagio. He headed off downstairs carrying his broom and sticks of wood, and I strolled in the opposite direction, not thinking of what I’d just learned, but wondering how Liya was getting along in the ghetto. Of late, I’d noticed increasing signs that my wife was having second thoughts about severing ties with her family. If Zulietta Giardino’s murder could provide an excuse for Liya to approach her sister or her father, at least one small, extraordinary blessing would come out of the tragedy.

Rounding the bend in the corridor, I came upon box D-17. The door’s thin wood had been reduced to splinters by the constables’ boots. It sagged inward from one hinge, affording me a narrow entrance. I passed through the miniature vestibule and stepped down into the Pino family’s private box.

Unfortunately, its scarlet interior had little to reveal. Messer Grande’s men had removed every stick of furniture and anything else that might have provided a clue to Zulietta’s killer. Only the draperies and silk-covered walls remained. As I moved to the front of the box, an odd sensation rippled along my backbone.

Dark smears cut across the grain of the wooden box railing, three narrow smudges just where Zulietta would have struggled to gain a last handhold. I scraped at one with a fingernail. Blood almost certainly. Had her killer pried her bloody fingers from the railing? I felt my heart pounding in my ears. How I would love to expose such a brute. I could cheerfully deliver him to the hangman myself.

My vengeful thoughts were interrupted by a trilling run of notes from Emilio. I glanced toward the stage. This was a vantage point I rarely occupied. How near the painted ceiling I hovered, and how small and far away Emilio and Maestro Torani looked as they moved about. Is that how I had seemed to the murderer after he’d completed his awful work? A doll-like figure, wide-eyed and horrified, pinned by his malevolent gaze?

Moving several steps to one side, I focused my gaze directly below, at the exact spot where Zulietta had crashed to the floor. A gentleman in a dark suit stood there, head bowed, walking stick firmly planted, the brim of his tricorne hiding his features.

Ordinarily, the lobby doors would be locked at this hour, but a persistent curiosity seeker must have bribed his way in. Just as I opened my mouth to call out, the man tilted his head and swept off his hat.

I waved a greeting, not certain whether I should be pleased or dismayed.

Though Messer Grande’s smile was benign, he beckoned with two fingers as stiff as a tuning fork. I was wanted.

Chapter Five

A sign creaked as it swung in the breeze: the Lion of San Marco, the symbol of the Venetian Republic, flaked by time and weather. Messer Grande had conducted me to a guardhouse on the San Polo side of the Rialto Bridge where a number of government buildings were clustered. He paused under the sign, one booted foot on the steps that led to a turreted, squat pile of brown-gray stones that housed pickpockets, sandbaggers, sneak thieves, and all manner of miscreants awaiting their turn before the bench.

“Leave the talking to me,” he said. “Just keep your eyes open. If you can identify Alessio Pino as the man in the box, so be it. If you’re not sure, don’t think exaggerating the resemblance will make you a hero.”

Indignation kindled at the pit of my stomach. “A hero is something I play on the stage. I have no need for such sentiments in real life.”

“Very well…” Messer Grande replied in a silky tone. Somehow I formed the impression that he was both pleased and surprised. With a nod, he went on, “Yes. Good. Perhaps you’ll be of more assistance than I dared hope.”

“I will if I can.” Somewhat mollified, I asked, “Did you arrest Alessio on Murano?”

Messer Grande snorted. “We crossed to the Pino factory the minute we left the theater. Most people run home when trouble is brewing, but not Alessio. Obvious why—his father is a terror. We found the old man tending the night fires himself. He was aghast when I told him about the murder. Even so, he refused to leave his kiln—the melting pots had reached some crucial stage that apparently requires a master’s hand. He ordered a servant to lead us on a search of the glassworks and the house that sits behind it. I had him unlock all the storerooms and cupboards large enough for a man to hide in, but we came up empty-handed. Cesare’s parting words were ‘run that mewling pup of mine to ground and haul him before the Avogaria—just don’t bring him back here or I might have to wring his neck myself.’”

“Cesare must think Alessio is guilty, then.”

“Guilty of betraying his father’s carefully laid marriage plans—certainly. But guilty of murder? I can’t say.” Messer Grande paused to stroke his chin thoughtfully. “I’ve seen a lot in my time, but I’ve rarely come across such a formidable father…”

I looked down at the stone stairs, focusing on the dip worn away by years of passing feet. I’d also been encumbered with a formidable father. Raising my gaze, I asked, “Where was Alessio hiding?”

Messer Grande replied as he ushered me into the guardhouse. “At a house near the theater. We found him by questioning his friends—one was not as firm a friend as Alessio must have thought.”

At the foyer desk, a uniformed sergeant was reading the
Gazzetta Veneta
with his feet propped up. After one glance at the senior constable, he scrambled to attention amidst a flurry of dust and official reports. Ignoring the man’s stiff salute, Messer Grande turned into a grim corridor. He continued his tale: “Alessio’s so-called friend had hidden him in the attics of his family home. This daring young sprig didn’t mind pulling the wool over his old father’s eyes, but when he saw that this was more than a trifling escapade—and that he’d be courting prison if he continued to lie to me—it didn’t take long for him to cough Alessio up like a gristly morsel of pork.”

“Did Alessio come quietly?”

Messer Grande lodged his tricorne under his arm and rubbed the back of his neck. “He didn’t struggle, if that’s what you mean, but when I confronted him with the particulars of Zulietta’s murder, he wept and swooned like a woman. My men had to carry him to the boat.”

We had walked the length of the dismal corridor and entered a small room. A warden considerably more alert than the desk sergeant awaited us with a bunch of keys. He sprang to open a door with a square grating, and we were admitted to yet another corridor lined with cells of the most wretched type. Most were empty, though I saw a few huddled shapes and easily perceived the stench of human sweat and filth. At least a modicum of fresh air and light was admitted through a few barred dormer windows. We stopped before the last cell but one.

Despite the rumpled clothing, the torn stockings, the dirty face, Alessio Pino was a handsome boy. I could describe him in no other terms, though he was only several years younger than I was. Messer Grande had stated his age as six and twenty.

I observed Alessio closely as he rose from the bare planks where he had been stretching out with his folded arms serving as a pillow. He was slender, with melting brown eyes, and a high forehead that perfectly balanced his squared-off, lightly beard-stubbled chin. His silver-threaded, blue brocade jacket was cut in the latest fashion, with absurdly padded shoulders and a trim waist. He smoothed the jacket’s wrinkles, straightened his powdered wig with a firm tweak, and plodded over to the iron bars with weary grace.

Messer Grande bade him good afternoon in a cool voice.

Alessio returned his greeting with a perfunctory bow. As his gaze slid to me, he straightened in astonishment. “What on earth are you doing here? Am I to have a serenade in this anteroom to Hell?”

I’d been recognized, of course. Alessio must have seen me at the opera many times. Before my lips could part to reply, Messer Grande cut in, “My companion is none of your concern, Signor Pino. I came to see if you’re ready to tell me where you were before you arrived at the Teatro San Marco last night. No more stalling, if you please.”

“But I’ve already told you—my boatman failed to show at the appointed hour. When I went in search of the fellow, I found him staggering away from a tavern, much the worse for drink. He wasn’t capable of rowing the length of the Canale Serenella, much less navigating the waves of the lagoon. I was forced to row myself across to Venice.”

“Your father states that you left the house a good two hours before the curtain rose on the opera. The trip from the Pino factory should take a quarter of that.”

“But you’re not accounting for the time I spent tromping around our corner of Murano. And I wasn’t rowing a gondola—I couldn’t manage that. I had to unhitch the cockle boat from a shallop that we use to transport sand and other materials. The tide was high and the wind contrary—it took me nearly three quarters of an hour to make the crossing.”

Messer Grande regarded him skeptically. Alessio’s story did seem weak. Rowing a tiny boat alone, in dress clothes? Could the glassworks supply no other man to convey the owner’s son over to Venice?

“I don’t know why you don’t believe me.” Alessio grasped the iron bars so tightly his hands shook. His expression wrinkled into a mask of aggrieved innocence. “If someone from the glassworks has not retrieved the boat, you’ll find it at a quay just west of the Piazzetta. It’s marked with our family name.”

“I’ll send a man to look for it, Signore, but tell me this—before you went to meet Zulietta Giardino at the theater, you stopped by a nearby tavern. Who did you see and for what purpose?”

Alessio dropped his hands. They looked very awkward, hanging about his flanks, twisting back and forth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Once I’d secured the boat, I went straight to the theater.”

A strained silence followed. I was itching to ask a few questions of my own, but Messer Grande had ordered me to be silent, and I didn’t fancy risking his wrath.

Eventually, Messer Grande addressed his prisoner in a tone of sorry reproof. “I’ve already made inquiries at the Pearl of the Waves.”

“Yes?” The question was a whisper.

“You were spotted the minute you stepped over the threshold.”

Alessio clutched the bars again. A look of fear passed over his features, but he quickly collected himself. He cleared his throat. “You’re right, and I beg your pardon, Excellency. I mustn’t lie. It will just cause more trouble, won’t it?”

“You may be sure of it. What was your business at the Pearl of the Waves?”

“I was supposed to meet someone, but I was late. The man had already left.”

“Who is this man?”

“I…I can’t tell you.”

“Your tongue seems to be working perfectly to me.”

“All right. I refuse to tell you.”

Messer Grande slapped his tricorne on his breeches. “This isn’t sport!” he cried. “Answer me, man! Who were you meeting before the opera?”

Pale, serious, countenance as cold as the surrounding stones, Alessio shook his head. “It’s a matter of honor, involving innocent men. You must take my word that the business had nothing to do with Zulietta’s death.”

Messer Grande drew himself up. His nostrils flared to twice their size. I shuddered for Alessio’s sake. Was the boy brave or foolish or merely stubborn?

“An innocent man has nothing to hide,” Messer Grande said. “If you won’t answer my simple question, I’m forced to believe that you murdered the courtesan Zulietta Giardino.”

Alessio went very still. He replied in exquisitely pronounced words, “I loved Zulietta. I would never hurt one hair on her head.”

“Perhaps you did love her…until you discovered that she’d made a cynical, corrupt bargain for your heart.”

“The wager? Is that what you mean?” Alessio ran a hand over his jaw. He looked to me as if I could offer help. Finding none, he turned back to his interrogator with a challenge writ large on his face. “I wouldn’t have killed Zulietta over that wager.”

Messer Grande grunted his disbelief. “Are you made of granite, then? Your lady deceived you shamefully. If her plan had come to fruition, you would have been the butt of ridicule for years to come. Women have been murdered for far less. Just last month, a husband strangled his wife for trying to convince him that his cat-meat stew was really chicken. The magistrate went easy on him—only ten years in the galleys. Perhaps the court would find you worthy of equal leniency…” The chief constable lowered his voice. “If you start telling me the truth.”

“I am telling the truth. Some of your questions I’m not at liberty to answer, but what I can tell will be the full truth. The women’s wager had no power to wound me. I could have put an end to it whenever I chose, but Zulietta was keen to proceed. She wanted to get one up on La Samsona—payment for past misdeeds, apparently. We laughed about the wager and about her rival’s obnoxious efforts to seduce me. Then we went on to discuss more serious things.”

“That’s not how I heard it,” Messer Grande retorted.

Alessio’s eyes flashed. “If you heard it from Pamarino, you can be sure it’s a lie.”

Messer Grande raised his brows in silent question.

“He’s a preposterous little man,” Alessio continued, “who makes himself difficult in a hundred ways. He took an extreme dislike to me on our first meeting. I don’t understand why Zulietta kept him around. She was too kind.”

“By his own words, he served as
cavaliere servente
and majordomo rolled into one.”

“Pamarino exaggerates his own importance, Excellency. And since I stand behind these bars, I can only assume the pitiful creature has also exaggerated a few things about me.”

“You are here because you hid from the law. Why would an innocent man do that?”

Alessio shook his head as if that vigorous motion could dispel a horrifying memory. “I beseech you, put yourself in my place. I was coming up the steps to the opera house when a crowd burst through the doors cawing and chattering like magpies—a woman had jumped from a box and broken her neck—no, someone pushed her—no, a terrible accident. I plunged on, intent on finding Zulietta. But then I spotted an acquaintance who told me Zulietta lay dead—and all of Venice saw her fall from my box.” He beat his palm with his fist. “God forgive me, all I could think about was…my father.”

I spoke for the first time, words flying unchecked from my tongue. “You ran away because you were afraid of your father?”

As Messer Grande shot me a withering glance, Alessio raised his chin and puffed out his chest. The lace on his shirt front was limp and disheveled, and one jacket pocket had been partially torn away. Even so, he rivaled the noblest prince I had ever played on the stage. He said, “I may be a coward where my father is concerned, but I loved Zulietta. And she returned my love. I had already dissolved the engagement my father arranged and meant to make Zulietta my wife. I was ready to give up everything for her, and yet you have the effrontery to blame me for her murder. It’s…intolerable.”

Alessio couldn’t sustain the pose. I don’t know whether grief or guilt or simple fatigue brought him down, but he crumpled before our eyes. We left him huddled on the floor of his cell, sobbing softly, head in his hands.

***

I followed Messer Grande out of the guardhouse, and we walked side by side in silence for several minutes. He led us through the markets, skirting the Pescheria, where noisy gulls contested for fishmongers’ scraps, then straight through the fruit and vegetable stalls, where he stopped here and there to pinch an apple or a winter melon. He finally came to a halt on the crest of the Rialto Bridge and motioned for me to join him as he shouldered in among the gawking foreigners along the parapet.

It took very little to amuse our visitors. The endless serenades of the gondoliers were a source of wonder, as well as our watery landscape. Men and women alike loved leaning over the wide, flat balustrade of the bridge, following the progress of heavily laden barges, pointing and exclaiming as if they had never seen a boat in their lives. When a barge bumped a gondola and a wild outburst of invective ensued, I heard one ruddy Englishman exclaim, “By Jove,” and suddenly I was missing Gussie with every fiber of my being.

“Well?” Messer Grande jerked me back to the business at hand. “Is Alessio the man you saw struggling with Zulietta?”

I pondered for a moment. “I can’t say. Truly. Alessio is the proper height, but he’s very slender.”

“His shoulders add some width.”

I nodded. “They do. Working the kiln must be good for the muscles. The man in the box had wide shoulders.”

“So…you’re saying Alessio might be the man?”

“Might be—yes, that’s the best I can do.”

Messer Grande turned to frown at the gaily sparkling waters of the canal with outright antagonism. In a moment, he jerked round again.